首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
Barack Obama invited a puzzling group of people into the White House: university presidents. What should one make of these stran
Barack Obama invited a puzzling group of people into the White House: university presidents. What should one make of these stran
admin
2014-04-28
47
问题
Barack Obama invited a puzzling group of people into the White House: university presidents. What should one make of these strange creatures? Are they chief executives or labour leaders? Heads of pre-industrial guilds or champions of one of America’s most successful industries? Defenders of civilisation or merciless rack-renters?
Whatever they might be, they are at the heart of a political firestorm. Anger about the cost of college extends from the preppiest of parents to the grungiest of Occupiers. Mr. Obama is trying to channel the anger, to avoid being sideswiped by it. The White House invitation complained that costs have trebled in the past three decades. Arne Duncan, the secretary of education, has urged universities to address costs with "much greater urgency".
A sense of urgency is justified: ex-students have debts approaching $ 1 trillion. But calm reflection is needed too. America’s universities suffer from many maladies besides cost. And rising costs are often symptoms of much deeper problems: problems that were irritating during the years of affluence but which are cancerous in an age of austerity.
The first problem is the inability to say "no". For decades American universities have been offering more of everything more courses for undergraduates, more research students for professors and more rock walls for everybody on the merry assumption that there would always be more money to pay for it all. The second is Ivy League envy. The vast majority of American universities are obsessed by rising up the academic hierarchy, becoming a bit less like Yokel-U and a bit more like Yale.
Ivy League envy leads to an obsession with research. This can be a problem even in the best universities: students feel short-changed by professors fixated on crawling along the frontiers of knowledge with a magnifying glass. At lower-level universities it causes dysfunction. American professors of literature crank out 70, 000 scholarly publications a year, compared with 13, 757 in 1959. Most of these simply moulder: Mark Bauerlein of Emory University points out that, of the 16 research papers produced in 2004 by the University of Vermont’s literature department, a fairly representative institution, 11 have since received between zero and two citations. The time wasted writing articles that will never be read cannot be spent teaching. In "Academically Adrift" Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa argue that over a third of America’s students show no improvement in critical thinking or analytical reasoning after four years in college.
Popular anger about universities’ costs is rising just as technology is shaking colleges to their foundations. The Internet is changing the rules. Star academics can lecture to millions online rather than the chosen few in person. Testing and marking can be automated. And for-profit companies such as the University of Phoenix are stripping out costs by concentrating on a handful of popular courses as well as making full use of the Internet. The Sloan Foundation reports that online enrolments grew by 10% in 2010, against 2% for the sector as a whole.
Many universities’ first instinct will be to batten down the hatches and wait for this storm to pass. But the storm is not going to pass. The higher-education industry faces a stark choice: either adapt to a rapidly changing world or face a future of cheeseparing. It is surely better to rethink the career structure of your employees than to see it wither (the proportion of professors at four-year universities who are on track to win tenure fell from 50% in 1997 to 39% ten years later). And it is surely better to reform yourself than to have hostile politicians take you into receivership.
A growing number of universities are beginning to recognise this. They understand that the beginning of wisdom in academia, as in business in general, is choosing what not to do. They are in recovery from their Ivy League envy. They are also striking up relations with private-sector organisations. And a growing number of foundations, such as the Kauffman Foundation, are doing their best to spread the gospel of reform and renewal.
All the following are mentioned in the passage to deal with problems of college EXCEPT
选项
A、active reform.
B、sensible choices.
C、structural adjustments.
D、cost reduction.
答案
D
解析
细节题。第七段第三句指出“The higher—education industry faces a stark choice:either adapt to a rapidly changing world or face a future of cheeseparing.”,此处提到“调整适应”和“面对举步维艰的未来”两种选择,之后对于解决问题给出个人建议,提及高校采取的解决办法,这些办法中没有提到减少开支的问题,故[D]为答案。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/dxpO777K
0
专业英语八级
相关试题推荐
OnlineShoppingIncreasinglypopularwithadultsandyoungpeople,onlineshoppinggivesyou【1】______tovariousproductsand
OnlineShoppingIncreasinglypopularwithadultsandyoungpeople,onlineshoppinggivesyou【1】______tovariousproductsand
OnlineShoppingIncreasinglypopularwithadultsandyoungpeople,onlineshoppinggivesyou【1】______tovariousproductsand
TV,Internetandradioareverypopularnowadays.Somepeoplesaythattheywillreplacebooksandwrittenwordsasthemainsou
AboutWetlandsintheU.S.A.Peopleenjoyafamoussoup(SHE-CRABSOUP)inNorthCarolinabecausethedaysoftheregionalso
A、respectpolicepersons.B、havealittlemorerespectforpolicewomanthanpoliceman.C、arelikelytosmackpolicewomanbecause
A、intendstomeantwopolicemen.B、meanstwopolicemen.C、referstoapolicemanandapolicewoman.D、doesn’tputstressongende
Thebizarreanticsofsleepwalkershavepuzzledpolice,perplexedscientists,andfascinatedwritersforcenturies.Thereisan
PolicemanasaWriterIdecidedtobegintheterm’sworkwiththeshortstorysincethatformwouldbetheeasiestforthep
CatastrophicvolcaniceruptionsinEuropemayhaveculledNeanderthalstothepointwheretheycouldn’tbounceback,accordingt
随机试题
Areenvironmentalproblemstoobigforindividualstosolve?Thismatterhasbeenintenselydiscussedforyears.Thefollowinga
成文宪法最早产生于()。
女,45岁。近1个月因夫妻关系紧张出现情绪低、易烦躁,发脾气,反应较迟钝,自觉脑子笨,忘性大。兴趣减退,觉得干什么事都没有意思。悲观,觉得前途暗淡。出门觉得周围有人议论自己。早醒,食欲减退。有自杀观念,但无自杀行为。既往体健。该患者主要的临床特征是(
《信息交换用汉字编码字符集·基本集》中的汉字根据其使用频率分为两级。()
()不得办理托收承付结算。
多血质的人其高级神经活动类型的基本特征是()。
学习中所谓的“举一反三”与“触类旁通”体现的是()。
《宪法》规定公民的政治权利和自由有哪些?
原来将一批水果按100%的利润定价出售,由于价格过高,无人购买,不得不按38%的利润重新定价,这样出售了其中的40%,此时因害怕剩余水果会变质,不得不再次降价,售出了全部水果。结果实际获得的总利润是原来利润的30.2%,那么第二次降价后的价格是第一次定价的
A、 B、 C、 BFootballmatch.
最新回复
(
0
)